Aestrid (NL)

On their latest and fifth album, SILVER, Aestrid from Soest, NL moves further down the line continues to step away from endlessly tweaking songs to perfection and stacking layers and layers of sound. Aestrid was anxious to get the feeling back that used to let them escape into another world and pull them back into that moment where you can feel the sound pounding on your chest and the adrenaline rushing through your body to get to that inspirational high. Bo Menning says: „When I was a teenager I used to stand in front of my guitar amplifiers and turned it up loud. I sang against the wall of sound that would come from the speakers. It was so loud and overwhelming. It was like a blanket of sound you wrap yourself in while you’re lying on your back looking up at the stars at night. „That was my world.“
The band’s vocalist, Bo says. That feeling kind of got pushed back as the band evolved over the years but never forgot what got him into playing in the first place. Aestrid found that feeling back and it all came together in one big studio space, in an open studio setting together with the help of Sonne Scheermakers and Robin van Saaze. The result is overwhelming. Aestrid starts and ends at a point, but it’s the ride where the real magic hides.

Aestrid was founded in 2004 by Bo Menning as a pure and direct emotional outlet in a room filled with loud amps. Friends around Menning started to notice the cathartic intensity in even talking with him about the music that he’d sometimes let them hear that were drawn from the direction of post-hardcore bands like Fugazi and the melancholy from artists like Motorpsycho and Elliott Smith. In the years that follow Aestrid has always held on to a healthy dose of DIY work ethic and work on their own terms when it comes down to recording and putting out albums. Every show has been known to be an intense experience for the band and their audience. Nothing is held back and everything is spent till the very last note. Since the beginning the band has played shows and recorded albums in and outside of the Netherlands, taking them to Germany, Denmark, UK and Canada.